Fulbright Master's scholarship 2011 (to study in the U.S.)

This one is an advertising... :-)

Somebody posted this info on milis beasiswa (beasiswa (at) yahoogroups.com), and as a Fulbrighter myself, I feel obliged to spread this too... :-) Preference will be given to applicants serving as faculty members of private institutions of higher education in Indonesia, but that does not mean that those who're not a faculty member are not eligible or have no chance at all. It's alright if you're not a full time faculty yet (which is possibly because you only have bachelor's degree). The definition of "faculty member" here also applies if you're only a research or teaching assistant at a higher education institution.

For those who's interested in pursuing a PhD degree, Fulbright also has separate scholarship programs for PhD.

This scholarship is very prestigious and competitive, even more so for the Master's level. Good luck to you who want to try...

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Fulbright Master Fulbright Master Scholarships, American Indonesian Exchange Foundation (AMINEF), USA

Preference will be given to applicants who serve as faculty members of state and private institutions of higher education in Indonesia. Applicants will possess:

• a Bachelor (S1) degree with a minimum GPA of 3.0 (4.00 
• leadership 
• a good understanding of Indonesian and international 
• demonstrated commitment to the chosen field of study
• a willingness to return to Indonesia upon completion of the Fulbright program
• a minimum institutional TOEFL score of 550 or IELTS score of 6.0

DISCIPLINES
All disciplines and fields of study are eligible for a Fulbright award. The fields of study covered by the Fulbright scholarship program in the past were limited to the Social Sciences and Humanities.  Since 2004, however, the policy has been changed to include also other disciplines with the exception of fields related to patient care or medical training nor to continue their study at medical school.

HOW TO APPLY
Candidates should complete the appropriate application forms. Forms are available either by mail or in person at the AMINEF Office, Gedung Balai Pustaka, 6th floor, Jl. Gunung Sahari Raya 4, Jakarta 10720. Please return to AMINEF your complete application package by the application deadline that includes:

• Completed application form. This includes a clearly written and concise study objective.
• Copy of your most recent, less than two years old, institutional TOEFL or IELTS score report.
• One letter of reference, either from your current employer or previous lecturer.
• Copy of academic transcript (English translation).
• Copy of identity document (KTP or passport).

CONTACT INFORMATION
Specific questions regarding the application process may be addressed via e-mail to the following address: infofulbright_ind (at) aminef.or.id. We do not accept email applications. Hard copies must be sent or delivered to American Indonesian Exchange Foundation.

DEADLINE
The deadline for the submission of application materials for all programs is April 30, 2011.
Note: Program requirements are subject to change without notice.
The form can be downloaded here.

http://www.aminef.or.id/file/fulbright/2010%20FULBRIGHT%20APPLICATION%20FORM.doc

Why do you pick University X for your graduate study?

I was just having lunch together with some fellow foreign graduate students from Knoesis.  Our casual remarks on how each of us will spend the upcoming winter breaks developed into an interesting discussion because one of them has a girlfriend that is coming to WSU to do a PhD, despite getting 1520 on GRE which is an extremely high score. If you're wondering how high is high for a GRE score: she got 800 out of maximum 800 for the quantitative part and 720 out of 800 for the verbal part. Getting a perfect quantitative score is actually doable for fairly good natural science/engineering students, as long as you're careful in understanding the questions and answering them. However, getting above 700 for a verbal score is very difficult, more so if you're a foreign student and majoring in subjects which do not really need perfect verbal skills, e.g., natural science or engineering. Even native American English speakers would find it difficult to get such a high score. Oh by the way, the girl in question is a Chinese.

Knowing that this one fellow A whose girlfriend is in question will probably finish his PhD in the next 2.5 years, one of the other fellow remarked that she should have applied to more prestigious top-10 universities like MIT, or Stanford, or at least other universities in top-30 which, he perceives, are better than Wright State. He even told us a story of his friend who got 1380 in GRE and succeeded in getting admitted to MIT. He said that after 2.5 years, this fellow A would probably find a job and moving out of Dayton, and thus it is better if she chooses a university like MIT or Stanford, so that they could be together from then on.

I did not comment much in this occasion, but this discussion made me wondering about the reasons why one person choose a certain university X over the others for his/her graduate study. There can be many factors affecting the decisions, e.g.:

• University X is (one of) the most prestigious and famous university in the country. This might be a typical reason that comes to mind when someone decides to go on to graduate study. The fame and prestige of having labeled "an alumnus of X" is certainly very tempting and in my experience, most often than not, it made people perceives you as better than most people, which may help you in finding a job.
• University X has a study program of my interest which ranks as (one of) the top of the country. Although University X needs not be the most famous or prestigious, this is actually similar as above. The difference is probably in the sense that the better perception will come most likely from people whose area is closely related to that particular study program.
• I know (possibly personally) a very good professor in my subject area who works in University X. This professor is probably a famous person in the area, and/or has published many scientific papers in the area, and/or has obtained large amount of funding from his research grants, and/or works in a lab/research group with the most modern and complete facilities. I suppose a good professor would probably has almost of all of those. He/she may be either young with a potentially exciting scientific career ahead or old with an established reputation. He/she may be a person who is not only good in doing research but also good as a mentor that enables you to reach your further goals of your scientific and professional life.
• University X is not the best, but still good enough while also affordable with respect to my financial situation. This often happens when you're looking for further advance study, but you have to pay the cost by yourself. For PhD student in the U.S., this is rather seldom because typically PhD student is supported through teaching or research assistantship, or other sources of funding. But such supports are not always available for students in the master's level.
• I am restricted to the requirements from the party that funds my study. If you're funded through some funding agency, e.g., governmental agency or NGOs, then it may happen that the agency predetermines which universities that can be applied in order to get funded. In that case, you probably have no choice, except comply to the requirement.
• University X is located relatively close to my home or my relative's home. This one thing  is also considered, particularly if you get homesick easily.
• My parents/family/boss forces me to study at University X.
• My wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend studies at University X, and I want to be together with him/her.
• Other reasons...

In the case of my fellow's girlfriend, it's probably because she knows personally a professor in our research center (she did an internship under him), aside from the fact that her boyfriend studies at WSU.

In my case, I would say that I chose WSU not because it's a top-10 university (though it's still one of the best in the midwest area), but more because Pascal Hitzler works here. I've known him (though not personally) since the time he was in Germany, and his research coincides with my interests too. Moreover, Pascal works at Amit Sheth's Knoesis Center, which is one of the U.S. top three research group in the Semantic Web area. Admittedly, I did put Wright State as my second choice when I applied for the Fulbright grant last year. My first choice was Carnegie-Mellon, but then CMU rejected my application. So, I guess it's kinda fated of me to be here. :-). I certainly don't know now whether Wright State is the right choice for me, but I believe it is.

In the end, I think, everyone differ on their consideration when choosing a university to do a graduate study. In the master's level, I suppose, you would weigh in more on the university's and program's reputation and quality. But in the PhD level, relationship with your professor probably has more say in deciding your choice.  In any case, I do believe that the above reasons take precedence over other reasons (except if you're restricted to some condition tied to your funding).

For PhD students who are getting started …

I just came across an interesting post by Matt Welsh from Harvard. He advised a few things to those PhD students whom are getting started their long endeavor towards a successful PhD research, including myself of course.

• Don't let school get in your way of your education.
• Just dive in and have no fear.
• Don't read too much (at first).
• Keep track of the papers that you read.
• Take a lot of notes.

Reflecting the advice to my (current) situation, I found that none of the items checked off. I guess I am not yet in full shape of doing the PhD research. :'(

New chapter

Entrance to Wright State University -- Photo by K. Shimada [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

 

It's been a while since I last posted something in this blog. In the meantime, there has been major changes in my life. Yes, as of August 22nd 2010, I left Indonesia to go to the U.S. for pursuing a PhD. I departed alone and now we (I and my wife) are making an effort so that she can join me as soon as possible.

For the next couple of years, I will be studying, working, and learning as much as I can under Prof. Pascal Hitzler. He leads the Knowledge Engineering Lab at the Knoesis Center, Wright State University which is located near Dayton, Ohio --- actually WSU is in the suburban area of Dayton called Fairborn. Dayton is not a big city, especially if you compare her with other major Ohio cities like Cincinnati, Columbus or Cleveland. Also, like typical american cities, Dayton does not have an extensive public transportation. There is only one bus line from WSU to downtown Dayton and it runs once every 40 minutes or so. For me who has experienced a much more comfortable public transportation system in Europe, this is a quite depressing situation because practically, you really need to have a car to get you anywhere.  To make matters worse, I've never had a car driving license before. Thus, aside from the fact that cars are not cheap to have, I'm quite pessimistic to be able to drive in the near future. Luckily, there is a rather large supermarket nearby which sells almost everything I need to survive.. :-).

My stay in the U.S. is supported by a Fulbright Foreign Student Grant under the name of Indonesia Presidential Scholarship Program 2010. It's been a privilege to get selected for this scheme.  They say that Fulbright grant is one of the most prestigious scholarship award in the world. This brings quite a tremendous pressure for me to do well. I will tell you more about Fulbright grant in other post later. For now, this should be enough to start again. Hopefully, Allah provides strength and patience for my success here. Amiin!

DPBO – Final Exam (Programming): Isosceles Triangle of Numbers (Problem B1)

This is the third post for the series. For other posts in the series, see:

• 1st part: Longest Common Substring (Problem A1)
• 2nd part: Generic Bubble Sort (Problem A2 and C2)

The following describes the problem:

Make a program to print out numbers in triangular patterns according to the output examples. The program will accept a positive integer not larger than 20 as a command-line parameter. Output examples are given below. Note that no space is printed before the last row of the triangle.

DPBO – Final Exam (Programming): Generic Bubble Sort (Problem A2 and C2)

This post is the second part of DPBO practical final exam on programming.  For other parts, please see:

• 1st part: Longest Common Substring (Problem A1).

This problem appears as both Problem A2 and C2. The problem description is given below:
You are given a Bubble Sort sorting program. This program provides a sorting method below.

DPBO – Programming Final Exam Solutions: Longest Common Substring (Problem A1)

This is the first post in the series of posts in which I am going to provide some solutions to the final exam of DPBO course this year. If I can, I will first provide the problem question and then proceed with the solution. I will try to provide as accurate English translation of the problem as possible, though I will sometimes modify the wordings slightly to make it clearer to the reader.

Solution for “Kuis 2 DPBO”

Since I won't be able to give back the result of quiz 2 in time, I guess it would be fair in the short time left for the DPBO exam that I provide solution for the quiz. Solution is due to Ms. Ika Alfina

Congrats to Jay

Congratulations to Andreas Senjaya, CSUI 2007 as the runner-up of "Pemilihan Mahasiswa Berprestasi Utama Universitas Indonesia 2010". Our (me, Pak Yugo, Bu Putu, Pak Herry, Pak Maruli, and Pak Andreas Febrian) decision to choose you as "Mapres Utama Fasilkom UI 2010" is proved correct. Hopefully, this achievement provides a great inspiration to all of us.

Wishlist for the next Compfest

Congratulations to 2008 & 2009 ers (Asad, Naning, Panji, and friends) for successfully organizing Compfest 2010 last week, on May 8th and 9th. There might be some minuses but overall, it's a great job, a culmination of months of hectic works. I admit that I was rather pessimistic of the event's success, especially with the uncertainties regarding the funding. But in the end, the event did go on quite well.

Now to the wishlist for the next year's Compfest:

• I (or we, the faculty) would like that Compfest showcases more of our research in computer science and IT. This year's Compfest was admittedly emphasized a bit more on entertainment and seminars, rather than on research exhibition. To realize this wish is obviously a more difficult job because such contents are not as easy to sell than, let's say, entertainment.
• I would like that our Compfest draws many participants from other universities, e.g., ITB, or Binus, or other universities famous for the IT/computer science education. I am sure there will be many more things that can be shown in the Compfest if they are invited.
• I would love to see more IT communities involved in the Compfest, just like Compfest 2009 where several user groups were involved. Such communities are able to attract more crowd to the event, but the difficulty lies on the fact that they typically do not have much money (thus won't be able to pay anything in terms of sponsorship or booth) and often take a very long time to commit their participation in the event.

The next Compfest will take as great (if not greater) effort as this year's. Solid organization and strong leadership are needed to make it work. These were shown in this year's Compfest. Can they be shown again next year? I certainly hope so.

The Dragon Book(s)

This post was motivated by the following picture (taken from Pearson's website) of the Red Dragon book's cover.

The Red Dragon book (taken from http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Compilers/9780201100884.page)

Some of my students recently used this image as their profile picture during the time of this midterm test. It turns out that there were 11 students (ferdi, budi, denvil, hari, gilang mentari, ken, nurul, raufan, glenn, agung wibowo and erwin)  attending the compiler course taught by Prof. Heru Suhartanto this semester. I found that was funny since they called themselves the knights and lady of compiler .. :-D. And yeah, by the way, 'the lady' here is singular because there is only one girl attending the course... :-)

You may guess that the course was not very popular which is true. Since my time as an undergraduate, this course was already viewed as one of the most difficult besides Prof. Chan's linear numerical algebra. It might be caused by the highly technical content of the course, making it challenging to most students who usually tends to prefer "easier" courses. Of course, there is no such easier course, but they always consider those courses where they can just sit and sleepily listen to the lecturer without pushing their brain with mathematical and technical details.

What makes it funny is that the textbook's cover fits the impression that the course is difficult. Picturing a knight facing a dragon whose head comes out of the computer's monitor really emphasize the metaphor of conquering complexity (at least this is what the Wikipedia entry of this book says). In fact, this famous textbook on compiler design and technique by Aho, Sethi and Ullman has been actually published three times, all of which depicting a battle between a knight and a dragon. The original edition was actually titled Principles of Compiler Design (published in 1977) and called the Green Dragon book. This was then followed in 1986 with the first edition of Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools which is called the Red Dragon book, and its second edition called the Purple Dragon book, published in 2006 (see the book's website here). The newest edition covers many modern issues in compiler technology, including  just-in-time (JIT) compilation, and garbage collection.

Such is the book's reputation, it is now considered the classic reference for compiler technology. Like Cormen's or Knuth's books in algorithm, this book is absolutely mandatory for those whom are interested with the technology. I also view this course as a must for CS students because  it underlies many advances in software technology. Don't be afraid with the dragon, it is not too frightening once you jump in the course yourself... :-)

Short note on CSUI’s curricula

I used to have a blog at blogspot. Sadly, it was neglected for a very long time. In fact, my real last post was when I was still living in the student dorm while I was studying in Dresden, Germany. This is partly because we didn't have internet cable connection after we moved away from the student dorm as we didn't get a place for a family, but also mainly due to my laziness.

My wife often remarks that I can and should write more. Considering that I do have a quite extensive personal library, she is obviously not far off the mark. What remains is the motivation to do that. Let's hope that it does not diminish over time....

Move on to today's issues. In the last two days, all (well, actually not all, as some are missing due to other commitments) academic staff, i.e., lecturer met in campus to discuss the forthcoming change to our bachelor programs in computer science and information systems. This change is actually periodical, once for every four years, to anticipate new developments and challenges, both internal and external.

Actually, after twice doing this 'rapat kerja' (yesteryear and the year before that), I expected that there will be a quite major change to the curricula, especially since many of us view that the separation between CS and IS program is rather unclear. Even I have hinted some of my students with the forthcoming changes, e.g., compiler techniques course is mandatory, data structure course is offered in the 2nd semester, etc.

However, the faculty also received some external inputs which imply that the level of programming skill of our graduates tends to decrease. This forced us to rethink again about the changes. In the end, we still arrive to the programming courses arrangement similar to what we do in the 2006-Curricula, namely starting from Dasar-Dasar Pemrograman (in C), followed by Desain & Pemrograman Berorientasi Objek (in Java) and then in the 3rd semester, followed with Struktur Data & Algoritma (in Java).

Some expected changes were retained though. This is mainly about the strengthening of separation between CS and IS stream. Some architecture & hardware-related courses for IS will be redesigned, while overall, there will be many more new, exciting, elective courses to be offered, including Semantic Web... :-).

Some works still need to be done to finalize the curricula, but it is expected to be used starting from the next semester. Hopefully this will lead to better direction for Fasilkom UI in the future... :-)

Moved to wordpress...

Please visit krisnadhi.wordpress.com for my newly started over blog...